Jerusalem - Shrine of the Book

To the right of the entrance of the Israel Museum in Jerusalem is the Shrine of the Book, with a dome of light-colored concrete modeled on the lids of the pottery jars containing the "Dead Sea scrolls". The scrolls were found from 1947 onwards in caves round the monastery of the Essenes at Qumran and thanks to the efforts of the archaeologist Yigael Yadin were acquired for Israel; there are also some scrolls in the Archeological Museum of Amman in Jordan.

The scrolls are the earliest manuscripts of the Old Testament in the Hebrew language apart from two silver tablets engraved with a few words from the book of Numbers. In the center of the rotunda are displayed scrolls containing extensive passages from the book of Isaiah (copies); written about 100 B.C., they show only slight variations from later manuscripts - evidence of the accuracy of the transmission of the Biblical text. Other texts are displayed round the walls of the rotunda. In cases on the lower floor are finds from Masada, material relating to the unsuccessful resistance by Jewish Zealots to the Roman besiegers in A.D. 73 found in excavations in 1964 and 1965 and the Bar Kochba letters found in the valley of the Nahal Hever in 1960 and 1961.